This
years campaign for the presidential nomination, both on the Democratic
and Republican sides, promises to be quite earthshaking in terms of ideologies
and constituencies supporting the two parties. What we see is an erosion of
the old politics as primary voters repudiate certain candidates and support
others.

At
this point, it seems clear that the Republicans will nominate Senator John McCain.
Not so clear, but likely, is that the Democrats will nominate Senator Barack
Obama. Is an earthshaking political realignment in the works?

The
tensions are more open on the Republican side. John McCain, the presumed Republican
nominee, was booed at a meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference
while he was trying to prove his conservative credentials. Conservative leaders
like Laura Ingraham and James Dobson blasted McCain for his deviant positions
on certain issues. Ann Coulter said she might vote for Hillary Clinton. Worst
of all, Mike Huckabee (no longer splitting the conservative vote with Mitt Romney)
racked up a string of primary victories posing as the true conservative in contrast
to McCain.

Barack
Obama, the Democrat, has meanwhile coasted to a number of impressive primary
victories since his triumphs in the South Carolina primary and on Super Tuesday.
Criticism of his politics is more muted. Behind the scenes, however, there is
anxiety in Democratic circles that his profession of racial inclusiveness may
be upsetting the political apple cart.

A
way to look at this is to see that the voters are undermining the leaders of
long-established voting blocs. The racially defined bloc supporting the Democrats
dates back to the 1960s. The socially and economically conservative bloc supporting
the Republicans dates back to the 1980s. This years election threatens
to unravel the tapestry of partisan politics that has long prevailed in the
United States.

An
explanation that makes sense to me is given in a recent article from U.S. News
& World Report. Historian Fred Siegel, it said, is among
those who see the schism over McCain as all about money - money that has flowed
to social conservative leaders and those who represent them in Washington. Politics
is a business, says Siegel, and just as Sen. Barack Obama is bad
for Al Sharptons business model, McCain is bad for people whose business
it is to act as intermediaries between the social conservatives and the GOP.
For them, he says, McCains nomination could well be a revolution because
they will have lost control of the funding mechanism.

So,
John McCain is bad for Laura Ingrahams and Ann Coulters business
model and Barack Obama is bad for Al Sharptons model of how to do
political business. Voters in both parties have said they want another approach.
That is what makes this years primary season so interesting. The special-interest
voting blocs are coming apart.

In
the case of Republicans, we saw economic conservatives come together with Jerry
Falwells Moral Majority of Christian social conservatives
during the administration of Ronald Reagan. No new taxes and tax
cuts for the rich came into the same Republican tent with appeals to overturn
Roe v. Wade and allow prayer in the schools. John McCain, however, voted against
the first Bush tax cut and he supports stem-call research. He is soft on illegal
immigration. And he is the presumed Republican nominee!

Hillary
Clinton, not Barack Obama, is the champion of politics as the Democrats have
practiced it since the Kennedy-Johnson years. She makes an appeal to black voters
on the basis of the special affinity that she and her husband have long felt
toward this group. She rallies female voters around her as a likely prospect
to become the first female president in U.S. history. In contrast, Obama does
not run for President as a black candidate; he runs away from this type of politics.
He runs, instead, as a candidate and a President who will bring people together
- not as black or white, not male or female, he says, but as Americans.

A
Harvard law-school professor, Randall Kennedy, has written a book called Sellout
which describes the attitude of many black people toward blacks who depart from
the traditional political norms. In a recent talk, he pointed out that Senator
Obama has been tarred with the sellout label by some because he
has attracted a significant part of the white vote. This makes some black people
nervous. Is his appeal based on a racially self-hating message directed at whites?
Is, indeed, Obama black enough? Can he be considered part of the
African-American community when neither of his parents was descended from African
slaves?

Previously
it was presumed that a mixed race person such as Obama might have been descended
from a white slave master who had raped a black slave woman. But Obamas
father was known to be a black man from Kenya who had married a white woman
from Kansas. The father abandoned Barack Obama and his mother when he was two
years old. The child was raised by his white grandparents. This does not fit
the acceptable racial paradigm. Clearly Obama loved both his mother and his
father. He himself is a model of the racial unity which he preaches as a political
candidate. That is profoundly threatening to practitioners of racial politics.

Carrying
the argument a step further, I dare say that Barack Obamas candidacy is
an assault on black racism. By racism I do not employ the usual
self-serving definitions that exclude black people on the basis of their supposed
powerlessness in society. My definition of a racist is someone who personally
identifies with his or her racial group more than with being a member of the
human race.

By
that definition, many black people are racists, as are many of other races.
Racism is not action but an attitude of self-identification. Black racists can
be just as hateful and vile as white racists in their words and deeds. They
are quick to label other blacks who accommodate white society as sellouts
and Uncle Toms - something which whites today would not dare to
say about others of their race who were friendly toward blacks.

The
presence of black racism in our community goes largely unrecognized. It is taboo
even to mention the subject. White racists have become so demonized in the majority
culture that to mention blacks in the same context stirs angry denunciations,
including and especially among progressive whites who want to preserve
the African-American community as a monolithic group supporting the Democratic
Party.

Perhaps
the time has come to say that, since racism is a problem of the heart, it is
none of the publics business. Racism is selfishness or self-perceived
superiority defined in racial terms. All people are selfish to one degree or
another. Only saints are free of this attitude. Since government lacks the power
to force people into sainthood, it should limit its focus to controlling violent
behavior, not malevolent thoughts. It should treat all people equally, regardless
of gender or race.

Now
all of this is, of course, political heresy. Moral even-handedness is hard to
accept in an age when each person or group wants to get something extra for
itself and there are power brokers who can arrange this for a fee.

Maybe
with Obamas candidacy the racially defined voting blocs will begin to
crumble. Thats what really worries the political brokers. Their business
model may soon be out of date. If McCain, the political maverick, worries
Republican stalwarts, so does Barack Obama worry, not just Bill and Hillary
Clinton, but all whose political outlook is based upon a loathing of the so-called
majority white-male culture with its institutionalized racist, sexist,
and homophobic tendencies.